Pahla B:
Welcome to the Fitness Matters podcast where every week we talk about the fitness matters that matter to you. I'm Pahla B, YouTuber, certified life and weight loss coach, soon to be author and your best middle aged fitness friend. Are you ready to talk about the fitness mindset that matters to you? Me too. Let's go. Okay, hello, hello, and welcome to the Fitness Matters podcast with Pahla B. That's me. You guys, this is episode number 221, which is "The Book Club" episode in partnership with Chirp Audiobooks.
Pahla B:
Now, for my friends who don't know, Chirp is an audiobook retailer that all offers all kinds of books, not just the self-help books that we read around here, but all kinds of books for really steep, limited time discounts. This month we have been reading "How Emotions Are Made" by Lisa Feldman Barrett, and today I have invited my friend Sally to join us for our conversation. Hello, Sally. Thank you so much for being here today.
Sally :
Hello, Pahla.
Pahla B:
How are you today? How are you feeling today?
Sally :
How am I feeling today? Excited.
Pahla B:
Good.
Sally :
For those who read the book, I'm trying to get my butterflies to fly in formation.
Pahla B:
I love it. I love it. You guys, by way of introducing Sally, I'm going to tell you a story that I had been talking... I think I had already mentioned this book on the podcast, but I actually don't remember that, and Sally, you can correct me if I'm wrong. But Sally is a member of the Get Your GOAL group, which is my private membership group, and we have a meeting like a group coaching meeting once a week. I mentioned the book and I think I even mentioned it in passing and Sally held up the book and she was like, "This is the book. This is the book we were reading." I was like literally hearing her hands. I had this immediate sense of this is somebody who needs to come on the podcast and talk about this book with me.
Pahla B:
So, Sally, tell me the story of how this book came to be in your possession? Because I happen to know that it wasn't because we were reading it for this book club. How and why did you come across this book?
Sally :
Well, the simple answer is saw a TED Talk on YouTube by Lisa Feldman Barrett and thought that sounds really interesting, "Oh, there's a book, that sounds like an interesting book." In a sense, you are involved in why I actually, rather than just, "Oh, that's interesting," and carry on, actually, bought the book and put it at top of my reading pile and actually read it. Because I do have quite a big stack of books to read.
Pahla B:
Yeah.
Sally :
It got to the top of that because really I was just at the point where I wanted what this book was offering. Which was, basically, a different view of what are your emotions and where they come from? It just sounded just to say, and at that particular point, I'd been enjoying your podcasts, getting a lot from them. But still was it's like I'm a very theoretical person, I like to know the theory, the why behind why this works. You are very much giving me, "Well, this works. I know, I've done that, this works. This actually works for me." Here you have this thing.
Pahla B:
How did you get this book? Because I think I had it in my mind that you got it-
Sally :
September.
Pahla B:
Oh, okay. In my mind, I constructed the theory that you had somehow bought it when it first came out. Because I think this book came out in maybe 2016. It was several years ago, I do know that. Oh, so this was a more recent purchase. Okay, so I always start the conversation, and you guys in the chat, I definitely want to hear from you. I think I know the answer, but I'm going to go ahead and ask you anyways. Did you like the book, Sally?
Sally :
What a strange question. Yes I did. Having said that, I'd say I love the book but I've also wrestled with it. It's not just been entirely, "Oh, everything here is wonderful and perfect and I understand it first time," and find that in some parts we're like that and the whole idea of emotions being something we create was just an absolute aha for me. Because I was well versed in the more traditional view that I'm a human being and I've got this rational side that's fighting my emotional beast that wants to run them up. If I'm realistic about it, I was recognizing more and more. Actually, that's not how I am. I have plenty of arguments but there's thinking on both sides and feelings on both sides is the argument. How is it? It's not one part of me isn't the beast at all. So how does that work? I'm really much just waiting for this, well, some other way of looking at that whole thing.
Pahla B:
Yes, and that's actually a lot how I felt about it too, and I'm reading the chat and it looks like... Jay says, "I loved it. Putting the theories into practice in the moment, being in charge of the construction is the hard part." Absolutely, and we're going to talk about that. Don't you worry. Amanda said, "It was interesting and so full of information. It was a lot to digest." Geraldine says, "I'm very thankful as I'm glad to have read it and never would've finished it without the book club." I agree. Julie says, "I couldn't finish it, way over my head." I wanted to tell all of you really, quite a few I couldn't finish it and this was a big book. I want you guys to know when I chose this book, I had not looked at it at all, which is something I'm going to do going forward.
Pahla B:
I'm actually really enjoying being surprised by the book. The very first month when we read The Menopause Manifesto, I had already read the book and then I listened to the book and then I gave it to all of you. I was like, really in that book. The second book I had heard of for years and years and years had it recommended to me, Brené Brown's book, had it recommended to me new numerous times but had never read it. This one I had never even heard of it before Chirp came to me and was like, "Hey, here's some options. What do you think about these?" I was like, "Sure, we'll go with that."
Pahla B:
I actually really liked that. I, in my mind, came to this book like, "Okay, I'm going to read this book and I'm going to understand it and then I'm going to come here on the podcast and have a real dissection of all the theories in it and really talk about it." I got about three pages in and I was like, "Oh, yeah, you know what, I'm going to read this like a novel and I'm just going to see what my brain holds onto." I will be completely honest, I didn't understand some of it. I'm going to say a fair bit of it was like, "I need to read that again. I need to absorb that again." I had a couple of big key takeaways, which is what I allowed myself to do, and I know there were also lots of details that I was like, "I didn't get that. I didn't get that at all."
Pahla B:
I'm very curious, Sally, that you said that it took you a while to absorb it too. I think you're one of the smartest women I know, so I'm intrigued by the fact that because I... Okay, you guys, I don't know if Sally has them next to her here right now, but she has pages and pages of notes on the book. Exactly, so I know how much she absorbed this and really took it in and really like got the science of it and everything. In fact, even you said that you loved listening to it and wouldn't have done so well. Was a physical copy that's interesting because I actually think a physical copy could have been helpful because apparently there were lots of diagrams, which of course we didn't get to see in listening to an audio.
Sally :
There's one diagram I'd like to try and share here. Forget time, there's one diagram. I would like you all to see, if I have it.
Pahla B:
Okay, because, so from your taking it in, because I know that you have both read the book and listened to the book, did you make it all the way through the audio?
Sally :
No, no.
Pahla B:
Okay, at least part of the way. Because I am very curious about the difference between listening to it via audio or reading it on paper. For the third month in a row, I can see myself wanting both copies. Like I loved listening to it for a lot of reasons, and I can see how referencing it again, and this feels like a very reference it again kind of book. I can really see how referencing it again might be better done visually than, whatever that word is, auditorily, I think is the word. Oh, and Lori says the narrator was okay but a bit too acty. I find that so fascinating because that was actually going to be my next question to you. How did you feel about having the book narrated by somebody who wasn't the author? I'm very curious about that. What did you think, Sally? I have opinions, but I'm going to ask you first.
Sally :
Well, I've actually heard quite a few of Lisa Feldman Barrett's podcasts, so I had her voice in my head as a reference.
Pahla B:
Oh, yeah, podcast. Go ahead and tell us the name because I didn't know she had a podcast.
Sally :
Not her own podcast, but she's been guesting all over the place. She has her website, she got a website, which I can't remember but we can obviously get that, and it's got a page of every podcast she's on or been on. Some are a subscription only, but quite a few are out there and you can listen to them, so yeah.
Pahla B:
So was it jarring for you to recognize her voice and then know that this wasn't her voice? Oh, thank you, Trisha. In the chat, it's lisafeldmanbarrett.com. Thank you, Trisha.
Sally :
Not wanting to offend my American friends but, to me, her accent was similar. That's very, very broad, so because her accent was similar, I could find it acceptable. I think if she'd been, but it wasn't... I think if listening was the first time I'd met the material then, yeah, absolutely. That the first eight chapters would've just flowed past in a novel way, and I think I might have enjoyed it but I certainly wouldn't have got as much from it as I did from reading.
Pahla B:
Yeah, and I think that's why I allowed myself to truly just listen to it as a novel because I can learn by listening. I'm very capable of that and I can learn by reading, and so I can see how having both of those would be in my favor for this particular kind of material though. Because there was a couple times later in the book when she would reference something from chapter one which she did numerous times in the late chapter. She's like, "Oh, yeah, back in chapter one when we talked about..." I'm like that was three weeks ago when I was listening. Like I would love to just flip back and be like, "Wait, what?" But really specifically, the reason I ask about having somebody who is not the author read.
Pahla B:
There were so many personal stories in this book where she says I and me and my daughter and all that. Every time the narrator said it, I was like, "But that's not you, that's not your daughter, Sophia." For me, I found her voice to be quite lovely. Like I really enjoyed it, very easy to listen to. But there was just that half a second of, "But, wait, that's not you. Every time she told a personal story which I thought was really interesting. Amanda says that, "I watched a few of her TED Talks and the narrator did not change my perception of the content." Oh, that's really interesting, "I would not have finished the book if I had been reading the actual book." Well, okay, you guys, I think part of... because there's quite a few didn't finish it or couldn't finish it.
Pahla B:
I do think some of that was truly our time constraint here. I just started talking about this a month ago. Having only a month to go through some pretty dense concepts and some... Like for some of us, this is like really brand new information. I have delved into this world before. There was a book that I meant to look up, the author of... that I could recommend it to you. When you watch the replay, I'll have it in the show notes or the description box. I read a book a couple of years ago about a neuroscientist who was looking for a fingerprint for sociopathy, like for sociopaths. So he was doing MRIs on all these brains and things like that. The first part of his book was all about how there is absolutely no such thing as a fingerprint for any emotion.
Pahla B:
The first, what, like two or three chapters of this book was really, really similar. Come to find out, I'm going to spoiler alert this for you because it really is the whole point of the book, but so this neuroscientist who was looking for an MRI, like fingerprint of sociopathy turns out he's a sociopath. It was a really, really fascinating look into people who basically don't have emotions, which was I thought it was really interesting having read that book and then contrasting it with this one where she was looking to find emotions the same way that he was looking for like an absence of emotion. And come to find out that the way the brain works just isn't like that. Coming back to you and your experience with it, Sally, how many times have you read this book? At least partially through audio, but how many times have you read the physical copy?
Sally :
Twice.
Pahla B:
Okay.
Sally :
Twice. Twice. I went back and read it when I knew I was doing this.
Pahla B:
Okay. Well, oh, so you took all those notes the very first time through?
Sally :
Yeah.
Pahla B:
Oh, so you did come to it like here's how I'm going to learn from this and then... Okay, so then on subsequent reading, did you read it more like a novel like this is just refreshing or do you ever let yourself read like that?
Sally :
It varied. There's some chapters I really enjoyed so much that I wanted the detail all the time round. I think the big major part of the book, the first seven, eight chapters is very much her laying out her theory and justifying it. In that sense, you can let that go over you and just pick a few points or you can look at the detail. It's funny, first reading through, I didn't quite realize how many of them have big names. She was actually going against. Second reading it was like, "Oh, yeah, she debunks Darwin, debunks Daniel -
Pahla B:
I know I love that!
Sally :
... Jimmy." She goes for it and I like that courage. I like that she's upfront and she's going for it and it's all there. For those who didn't carry on to the end, I'd almost say, "Go back to chapter nine and go from chapter... or if you didn't make it to chapter nine, start from chapter nine and listen to it forward." Because then what she's doing is she's taking the theory and she's applying it to real life in all kinds of controversial ways. Some of it is really, really speculative and that's fine. It just fun because she's saying, "Look, if you start seeing humanity, you start seeing the world in this way."
Sally :
Then these are all the things we ought to be looking at differently from legal systems to health and the small amount of self help what can we do for ourselves? Yeah, if you didn't make it all the way through the technical arguments, if you like, then go back and have a go at the rest.
Pahla B:
Yeah, then that's pretty much that's almost exactly the advice that I was going to offer as well. Because the first, easily, the first half of the book really was very sciencey and the theory, and it was very dense. Then the second half, which was probably only the final third was like, "Oh my gosh, this is how it affects me every day. Oh my gosh, this is how it affects me every day." Like it was mind blowing truly in a lot of ways because I understand why she had to do that, why she had to lay out, "Here's what we have thought for hundreds of years and here's why this is so different." I'm actually really curious, come answer it in the chat, had you ever thought about emotions this specific way before?
Pahla B:
I know that it's something akin to what I talk about, about how you are the creator of your own emotions by you create them through thought. But I'm curious if the science, therefore, also made sense or if this whole thinking of, "Wait a second, what do you mean emotions aren't like the same for everybody?" Like, of course death is sad, of course war is terrible, and all those kinds of things. Like was this a novel experience to even think about emotions like this? I feel like those of you who listen to the podcast and maybe are familiar with the things I talk about might have at least laid the groundwork for it. But I am really curious if it felt like brand new information. Therefore, Sally, I'm curious, for you, how long had you, well I'm going to say known, that your emotions are an inside job as opposed to so and so made me mad or this hurt my feelings. Like when did that realization come to you?
Sally :
Tricky one, tricky one.
Pahla B:
Well, you don't have to give me an exact date but was it... Go ahead.
Sally :
No, it was an inside job. That was more clearer from listening to your podcast, I think I would say that laid those seeds. I'd certainly read a fair amount of self-help life coaching things over many years, and always run a ground on the emotional side because I was not getting it in the way that they simply portray it. It was really the mindset work, which you were putting out in your podcast, which was suddenly making a lot more sense to me. Then, of course, you get involved with you and you find you're saying works for your feelings as well.
Pahla B:
We'll find a book about that. We will, I promise.
Sally :
This does include it. For me, because, actually no, the feeling, my feelings part of the work has been the far tougher part from even finding my thoughts has been.
Pahla B:
There's so many of us. Thinking comes much easier to me too, it really does. Hearing the thoughts comes much easier to me, it really does.
Sally :
I was prepared to accept you at your word in terms of your feelings is good for you. It helped that this book actually does say there's neuroscience behind that because there's always a part in me which is like, "Okay, feel my feelings." Why do I want to do that? Why do I want do that? Someone's obviously doing it, but do it, but why do I want to do that? Actually, it is covered in the book, but there's so much else in there you could easily miss that neuroscience actually justifies feeling your fingers as much as finding the thoughts.
Pahla B:
Again, because it was slightly repetitive for me, personally, having read that other book a couple of years ago, I felt like she spent a lot of time working on the debunking versus the explanation of her theory. I thought that was particularly interesting because, honestly, in some ways, yes, like I said, it was slightly repetitive for me because I had read that other book. But I was wondering for somebody who came at this essentially blind, was it almost confusing to be like, "Wait a second, so here's this theory over here that I don't know, and then now here's this story over here that she's purporting that I also don't know."
Pahla B:
I'm trying to learn both of them, and then she's explaining that this one is better and this one is... I even found myself feeling that way again in the later chapters when she would reference it again, and it was like, "Okay, now wait a second, what are all the tenets of the essentialism theory versus her constructed theory?" It was very interesting to me like how much language you had to learn to even understand what she was talking about. Geraldine says, "I wish she had done a summary of things." Geraldine, I don't know if you made it all the way through, but she did. Literally, like the last three pages was more of a summary and I was like, "Ah, here we go. This is what I've been waiting for. I could have used a little more cliff notes maybe in the middle before we got onto some of the practical application."
Pahla B:
Lori says, "Her theory is pretty simple if we weren't basically all drowning in essentialism, even if we didn't have by name for it." Exactly, exactly. Which leads me to my next question about what did... Well, here, let me ask a really broad question, and for everybody in the chat as well. What do you think was your... like if you had to pick one biggest takeaway from the book, what do you think is like the thing maybe that you found the most surprising or just that felt the most relevant to you personally?
Sally :
It would probably be just the theory of constructed emotion.
Pahla B:
Yeah, constructed emotion versus sensing it from something-
Sally :
What you're constructing is your own. You are informed by the culture you are in and the people that raised you and all those things contributing to it. But, at the end of the day, you're not drawing on genetic givens and foundations, you are drawing on something that you are making... And also, from a day to day sense, moment to moment sense, you are remaking it live as you go.
Pahla B:
Which I found that fascinating too, and I, honestly, I didn't... I know she said it numerous times, but I didn't quite get that until I was almost done with the book. She said it, what must have been the fifth or sixth time, and maybe that's what did it for me finally, but I was just like, "Oh, none of this is static." Which, again, is something that I do talk about and she didn't specifically use the word neuroplasticity. That is the way that I've always heard it, that you can reshape and reform your thoughts and your feelings, reform your brain. When she said it, it was just like, "Oh, it's true. There is no such thing as, in a nugget, happiness."
Pahla B:
Happiness, I hate to say happiness doesn't exist, but there's no nugget of happiness that is the same for every person or the same even for you every time. Just even the thought that we are constructing happiness every single time we feel it, I agree, that was completely mind blowing to me. Amy said that the most relevant for me was the idea of the importance of our individual contexts in creating what we understand to be a feeling. Totally, totally agree. For those of you who didn't make it all the way through the book, it was either chapter eight or chapter nine when she talks really specifically about the legal system and about how we are all trying to basically apply our own thinking about our own feelings to other people and how far reaching those consequences are.
Pahla B:
Cat says that the takeaway is you have the ability and responsibility. Yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely love that. Lori said that the idea of emotional granularity and that I can create emotions that fit my needs and goals, if I'm aware enough. Yes, I love that. Let's actually talk a little bit about emotional granularity because I understood that concept, kind of, and also I think that was one of the things that I might have struggled with. Not the most, but one of the most things. Because thinking about my own feelings about feelings, my own thoughts about my feelings, I think one of the biggest things that I took away from the book was how different everybody's feelings are.
Pahla B:
Really specifically, the story that I loved was her Dutch colleague who didn't understand coming to America and all the feelings that we talk about. Then when she gave so many examples, none of which I'm going to be able to come up with off the top of my head, but so many examples of emotions that exist in other countries, other places, other cultures that we simply don't have here. It made me feel, but I had some thoughts about that where I was like, "I am not a citizen of the world." I had no idea. I really truly felt that some things had to be universal, and therefore, my emotional granularity, I thought that I was pretty good with that.
Pahla B:
Then come to find out, there are all kinds of emotions that exist that I've never heard of, and that I might never be able to experience because of my experiences in my culture with my gender and all the things that make up me. I'm curious, Sally, what was your takeaway? Sorry, I've got a hair on [inaudible 00:27:17]. But I'm curious what your experience was with that? Like, were you aware of, I'm going to say, a lack of standardization of feelings or was that surprising for you too?
Sally :
It was kind of a release.
Pahla B:
Oh, I love that.
Sally :
Because assuming that the traditional model that there's all these standard things that we all have, and yet, in comparison, real life experience says, "Well, actually, no, sometimes I'm sure people are doing or experiencing something which I don't have words for." So, in a sense, to have it like, "No, no, it's not universal," but actually there are these missing bits and pieces. Because it went along with the idea that you can make up your own words for emotions. She mentioned an author and I can't remember the name of the author, but who actually throughout their descriptive writing, does these word construction.
Pahla B:
Oh, I don't remember who the author was either.
Sally :
Yeah, she gave the example of chiplessness, which is that very mixed feeling you get when you're reaching your way to the bottom of the bag of chips and... I'm translating live here, it's just tricky.
Pahla B:
I love it.
Sally :
And that feeling of both disappointment when your hands groping and there's not one there. Plus that heavy feeling and that guilty feeling of that whole mix that we all associate with having eaten a large amount of something. It's that idea in some places it's found its way into a language that we haven't got words for. I think the other thing is because you think, "Well, is she completely saying there are no common emotions?" Actually, she doesn't, she's not because what she says is effectively our culture and our situations develop the language and the emotional models that we need. If you think about it, human beings have some pretty common problems to solve.
Sally :
We're all going to have the feeling of hunger and what I'm hungry means. We're all going to have the feeling of grief because grief it's a common human experience, so there are going to be you know what we think of as universals. They're not inbuilt, you don't have to have them but just experience alone in solving the problem of being a human being with other human beings [crosstalk 00:29:53] generate.
Pahla B:
Yeah, which I loved how she said that really specifically, and this was probably, this was one of the things that my brain grabbed on to because it's like, "Oh, that really does describe everything." The core problems of being human, especially in like a social world, is getting along or getting ahead. I thought that was so fascinating because it really does describe a lot of the feelings that we have. And yet, because she did indeed, I'm going to argue with you, not argue, but I'm going to... Because there was one line that really struck out to me where she said that there is not one single emotion that was found everywhere in the world.
Pahla B:
Not that we don't have lots of overlap, but like not every single tribe that they had studied or society that they had studied felt. I don't remember if it was happiness or anger. Do you remember? That not everybody has a word for happiness and not everybody has a word for anger. Things that I consider like primary emotions are not considered primary in other places.
Sally :
I can't remember, it was a tribe somewhere because obviously the westernization of the world mean we've, "Thank you, Hollywood. You've exported a whole lot of emotional language." But I think it's a whole tribe, we only saw emotions as something to do with the relationship between people. That on your own, sitting somewhere, you weren't going to be having any kind of emotion.
Pahla B:
Yeah, so fascinating. There was a lot of mind blowing... I felt like when I allowed myself to simply just be immersed in it versus listening to it and thinking to myself, "I don't quite get this. I don't quite get this. I don't quite get this." Because that got really loud in my head a couple of times where I was like, "I'm following you and I'm also not." But when I allowed myself to just listen, there were so many moments where I was just like, "Oh my gosh, I never thought about it that way before. Oh my gosh, I never thought about it that way before." Oh, interesting, Julie said, "The first few chapters brought up anger for me remembering going through hours and hours of emotion lessons, oh, with my ASD son.
Pahla B:
The little pics of this face means sad, this shape of mouth in an oh and raised eyes means surprise. I had a moment of maybe my son has always sensed emotions on a different level." This is super fascinating, Julie, to think... If I'm going to hear... Here, let me just tell you a little something about what I'm getting out of your message here. I think that the anger might be towards the people who were saying, "Oh, here are these essentials of emotions." Then I'm wondering if it also brought you a sense of relief like, "Oh, just because he didn't learn it this specific way, that he still has his own emotional granularity and his own way of thinking about things.
Pahla B:
It is him still, obviously, his brain is still constructing emotions and feelings the same way that everybody does. It's so, so interesting. Lori said, "Yes, the same." So interesting. I think that, having been a preschool teacher, I remember that we had a poster in our room with the faces. I remember actually having a conversation with a child one time and they were like, "But not everybody who's happy looks like that." This was long, long, long before I did any mindset work on anything ever, and I remember being like, "Oh, yeah, of course, absolutely." That's just one way to think about happiness.
Pahla B:
For me, I think I was ready to hear this message about there is no singular fingerprint for what any specific emotion is. I think I had already come to at least some of that without ever putting it in words, certainly but I think it was really interesting. Like as soon as I found this work, it was like, "oh, this makes so much sense." Did you have that sense too, Sally? Like, "Oh, thank goodness, here, somebody put this into words for me."
Sally :
Yeah, that was exactly it. It was just so nice to have this complete theory to replace the classical theory that made so much more sense in terms of all kinds of little bits and nuances. Yeah, so that was why I got so excited and wanted everybody that I knew to read this book. You've got a brain here, have a user manual because we do carry this essentialism model, even though I haven't got a name for it in our heads for how the world works. Because maybe it's the obvious way things seem to work, but it's also how we're taught and how we're told and how everything is shaped around us. Having this other way of, "No, actually, things can be constructed dynamically as we go along," was just, yeah, it was just so exciting. And a relief, more than anything else, rather than trying to fit square pegs and round hole which was like, "Oh, no, the peg can go over here in the square hole."
Pahla B:
Yeah, exactly, exactly. I think that's how, honestly, that's how I felt coming to mindset work at all. Truly, at all to come from a world where, really I'm just going to go ahead and say everybody, I know it's not everybody, but just bear with me when I say something like that. Like everybody says, "Oh, that hurt my feelings," or I just was giving this example somewhat recently. Like I felt so good when we put the Christmas tree away. We associate our feelings with our circumstances and with other people and with everything that's like literally outside of our control all the time. For me, to bring it in house and be like, "Oh, no, no, no, no, this is my own brain," I'm pointing to my heart, "but this is my own brain constructing everything I feel.
Pahla B:
To me, that just it felt so empowering, so incredibly empowering that this is not outside of my control since literally everything else is. It was like, "Oh, now I can do this." But so having said that, I still feel like this is, as she called it, like a revolution. It's still so underground. People just don't talk in the general world about emotions like this. I'm curious for those of you who did make it all the way through the book, and Sally really specifically, like when you got to... Julie says, "Is that a summary of the book emotions come completely from us?" Yes, she has, well, she has some theories that I found slightly more difficult to wrap my brain around and I really wanted more science, weirdly, even though that was not my thinking in the first half of the book, but I really did want more science as far as how we affect each other.
Pahla B:
She puts the body budget, meaning also your emotions. How we as a group have influence on one another, and I really wanted more explanation of that but it was outside the scope of what she was really specifically talking about. But I'm curious, when she got to the back half of the book and she was like, "Okay, so here's how this applies to the legal system, here's how this applies to, for example, your pets. Here's how this applies to like other parts of the world. Like this isn't just theory, this is how this shows up as essentialism in the world." I'm really specifically curious because it was an American book written by an American. Did the chapter on like the legal system, did that have much effect on you or did you turn that around in your mind like, "Yeah, this is how we do things here also?" Or how did you feel about that one really specifically?
Sally :
Well, she used British law as quite a few of the examples. I mean, quite a few of her cases were UK cases.
Pahla B:
Okay, that's interesting because I didn't hear that. Isn't that hilarious? I was listening to it with my American ears and I heard American stories, so that's so funny that she heard British cases too. I'm going to listen to it again just for that.
Sally :
Well, it was funny because she started by saying, "I don't know anything about British law." I thought, "Well, okay, so why did you bother? Why reach out wider? You could have stayed..." I suppose I'm just used to Americans and me writing about America so I was quite surprised. It's only a few case examples that she mixed in there. I thought she had interesting things to say. I think when she got to the point of maybe we abandoned the jury system because jurors are biased, I was like, "Oh, whoa, hang on. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa."
Pahla B:
Right, and I'm curious if you felt this way too, there were lots of it that I was like, "Oh, this is really interesting. This is really interesting." Then she just went like, "Oh, and by the way, this could change literally everything you know about everything ever." I was just like, "Oh, it does but also wow, that is big. That really is big to think that..." I mean, really specifically here in America, that's fundamental is our trial by jury. That's something that we really expect -
Sally :
Let's face it, let's face it Americans, you did get it from us in the first place.
Pahla B:
I know. Like so many of our good ideas, yes, absolutely.
Sally :
It's the whole democracy thing and trouble your peers is something we've been doing for a while.
Pahla B:
Yeah, a while. Exactly. It's so funny though. But okay, and Amy brought this up too like I did not like that she says the dogs don't have emotions.
Sally :
She did say, though, what they do have is affect, so do we, which is basically for those of you didn't memorize her terms. Which is this mixture of pleasant, unpleasant, calm or aroused, which is what gives us our mood in the moment. That background feeling of, "Am I comfortable? Am I uncomfortable? Am I energized? Am I relaxed?" As she points out, if animals only have our pets, our dogs and cats only have affect. You can do an awful lot with affect. She's not really putting animals aside, she's just saying, "Look," really she's saying, "Look, look what you can do just with that alone without having emotional concepts."
Sally :
Because she's not really saying they haven't got emotions, she's quite picky with her language. She thrives, she stops. Other than the title emotions isn't used. She quite early on states that there's emotional or emotion concepts, and throughout she refers to emotion concepts or categories, which she flip flops between the two.
Pahla B:
It's really funny because I hadn't specifically noticed that and you pointed it out to me just now actually just made something click. Because it is, as she said numerous times in the book, language is so important. Maybe you guys have heard me say that before too, language is so important. I think we all, again I'm just going to go ahead and generalize, we all talk about emotions as like this one thing. This very essentialism thing, and she's like, "No, there's actually more to it. When you pull it apart over here, there's these concepts and then when you pull it apart over here, there's the affect. There's what you see, that's how we behave and the things like that."
Pahla B:
It was like, "Oh, that is really important to notice the difference." Because I did notice in that chapter really specifically, she did not have a sentence that said, "Animals don't feel." Like did not say that at all. She implied that they do not have feelings like we do that we attribute to them, but she didn't come out and say they don't feel, which is okay. Julie says, "Wait, dogs don't have emotions? I'm out." Right, and Amy says, "No, my dogs have love. They love me. And my cat has a great deal of anger." See, that's the thing, for me too, honestly, I anthropomorphize my animals so much, you have no idea. My animals have big personalities and they talk all the time and it's based on just how they're behaving. Which is truly, here, let's bring this back around, this is what we do with people.
Pahla B:
People are already anthropomorphized, but we are projecting our own perceptions onto somebody else's behaviors all the time and attributing that to their emotions. But really all we have is our own. Bringing it back around. Okay, and she was talking about the idea of an emotional concept based on them not having human language. I thought that was very interesting too, and I think had the entire book been about animals and emotions, I think there would've been room for a lot more. At that point, what was it? Chapter 11, chapter 12? We were so far in. I think like the back third of the book, she had so many ways that this applies in the world that almost every single one of them could have been a book in and of themselves that I think she just wanted to put it out there like, "Here, this is something else to think about. Here, this is something else to think about."
Pahla B:
Then didn't maybe fill it in as much as she would have in an entire book by it. Actually, speaking of that, Sally, have you read her other... I know she's got at least one other book. I think it's like "Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain" or something like that. Have you read that one as well?
Sally :
Yes, yes, yes.
Pahla B:
Oh, okay.
Sally :
I was going to say way back in the chat somebody was saying, "Hasn't she got a summary or an easier version?" And seven and a half lessons about the brain, she describes it as a beach read. It's a beach read on neurobiology.
Pahla B:
I know, I think that's an oxymoron. I really do.
Sally :
No, no, seriously, seriously, that it's written very, very lightly. It's almost like it's eight chapters. It's a small book. Each chapter read on its own, and yet it's a lighter version of what you might like to know about your brain. It's not the hard argued academic research type thing at all.
Pahla B:
So is it only about emotions or is it about other things as well?
Sally :
It's broadly about your brain, seven and a half lessons about your brain and how it works.
Pahla B:
So it's about how we think as well as how we feel, and is it about how we behave also? I'm curious if we're getting the whole thoughts, feelings, actions, chain here?
Sally :
No, it's much, much lighter and smaller in that sense. It's not a substitute for.
Pahla B:
Oh, no, no, no, I just I was wondering if we got a little bit about more topics or if it's seven and a half lessons about the brain regarding your emotions?
Sally :
Only likely regarding your emotions. Because she talks about why do we have brains? Why do we have a brain?
Pahla B:
Oh, fascinating.
Sally :
What's a brain fall? Why do we have one of those?
Pahla B:
Yeah. Okay, that sounds really cool. I'm going to take this as a recommendation. Did you like that book as well?
Sally :
Yes. Having done the other book, it was so lightweight. There's a part of me thinking, "Yay." I actually read it and thought this makes... Oh, okay, owning up here. I thought, "This makes a really good Christmas present." I had a last minute present to do so I actually gave it away. I thought, "You never know I've read but this looked brand new." I wrapped it up and gave it away thinking to myself, "I must get round to buying another coffee because books don't escape my library very often."
Pahla B:
Yeah. Oh, that's so funny. I love it. Yeah, I will definitely consider reading that as like a nice companion piece. Again, my overall takeaway was that I really enjoyed this book. I felt like it corroborated a lot of what I talk about. There were at least two or three times where it was not the book's fault, it was thoughts that I was having about the book about what I was reading where I was like, "Oh my God, everything I've ever said is wrong." I absolutely felt like some of the things that she talked about were really specifically I have absolutely 100% I will own up to this. I have absolutely talked about the prefrontal cortex and the back of your brain, the lizard brain. I have talked about that.
Pahla B:
So to find out that neuroscience has really debunked the parts of your brain conversation, honestly, in my mind, I don't know that I ever truly believed that you thought some thoughts in one part of your brain and other thoughts in other parts of your brain. I've used those as like a mental model just for, "Here's how you can think about it but it's not necessarily literally the science." I feel like I've been really clear, you guys, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not a neuroscience, right? Like I'm not a scientist at all.
Sally :
But the point that she makes is that a lot of scientists are still working on the old training brain model, and the whole lot of her colleagues are still racing around trying to find the bit of a brain that does the circuit, does such and such a thing. That's why as part of the book was really actually that controversial because there will be plenty of her colleagues out there going, "No."
Pahla B:
Again, that's how I felt, and I'm not her colleague, but I felt that same way like, "Oh, that means that some of the things that I have talked about are possibly, again this was a theory, but really possibly incorrect. I really, again for those of you who didn't make it all the way through the book, just so you know, I literally finished the book last night like five minutes before I went to bed. I was not scrambling because there have been books that I have read on like 1.1 or 1.2, or possibly even one and a half speed. I listen to most podcasts on one and a half speed. This one I absolutely had to read at or listen to at normal speed because there was so much to take in.
Pahla B:
But last night when the very, very wrap up of the book, essentially, she says, "By the way, again, let me clarify, this is all theory. At some point, every single thing I have said could be debunked when we have better science, when we know more, when we have more testing available to us. At some point in time, my theory might sound as essential as Darwin's theory. It might sound as basic and tiny and as not all encompassing as something that we look back on." I thought that was a really, a very nice way to finish the book because she's basically just saying, "We don't know everything. We can't possibly know everything right now and let's all keep looking." Let's all keep our minds open to the idea is that there might be some other way that our brains could be working with this.
Pahla B:
That this is not everything that we think we know isn't necessarily the answer. I always like it when scientists say that. It makes me feel like we're all in this together. Nobody has all the answers and some people have some of them, which leaves me room at the table. I have some of the answers a little bit. Oh my goodness, I love it. Trisha said, "I thought it fits nicely with the mindset work that you share," and Jay says the same thing, "That we don't expect you to know the up to the minute science." Thank you. I appreciate that. "Because I would not be able to fulfill that for you. We never have all of the answers and I'm a physicist." Oh, Geraldine, so yeah, you know this too as well. I love it. Absolutely love it.
Pahla B:
Geraldine said, "The bits that I found most interesting were her answers to age old philosophical questions such as do we all see the same colors? Does the tree make a sound?" I love that. Those are conversations that I have had in my own brain and with other people before about how it truly is impossible even on the most basic level to know whether or not when you say green, if you are seeing green the way I'm seeing green. Which obviously you're not because my mother, just the other day, did this to me. She looked at something on her phone and she's like, "The green button." I'm like, "That is blue. That is as blue as the sky. Are you kidding me?" No, she did not see green.
Pahla B:
That's so funny.
Pahla B:
Julie says, "I'm glad I came to listen even though I didn't finish. This was really helpful." Yay, I'm glad. I'm super glad. You guy, here, let me wrap up with my thinking about this book. I found it to be a dense read. I found it to be immensely enjoyable for the parts that I could take in without like thinking too hard about. I also found it to be very thought provoking. Like I would absolutely recommend this book as something to not just sit and enjoy and not just read because you agree with everything. And not just read because you disagree with everything, but to take in and just find a slot for it in your mental model of how feelings work. How your feelings work, how the world works, how other people's feelings work, all of that. I find that to be helpful in that sense. Would you agree, Sally, that this just slots in somewhere?
Sally :
Absolutely, absolutely does. I think it, for me, it just supports so much of what you do. The chapter nine is as near as she gets the self-help. It's the self-help chapter. It's very theoretical, it's not really practical. There's always kinds of things that might help you, but doesn't go into detail. Well-
Pahla B:
Well, it did because she specifically said you should exercise. Just I'm throwing that out there, you guys, that was my favorite part of the book.
Sally :
Well, she said, she mentioned exercise. She mentioned sleep. She mentioned body, budget, diet. Basically, eating the right thing, eating healthily. Also she mentioned, effectively, she mentioned managing your mind because what she said was you need to deconstruct your emotional concepts and then you can rebuild yourself new ones. She didn't say how, practically, how do you do that because you do.
Pahla B:
I agree, yeah, she stopped short of that.
Sally :
You see, you do. For me, I think the practical gap of how do we actually do chapter nine? Well, we'll come over and see Pahla because she'll help you out with that one.
Pahla B:
Yeah, I agree. That was a very nice summary because I do agree that essentially what she says is your feelings are really important and the more you know and understand them, the better you'll feel. She does not actually say that concisely about how many pages was this book? But that is essentially the message that your feelings are important. They don't come from outside of you, and when you understand them, that it will enrich your experience, your human experience. Absolutely love that. Trisha says, "I love the book club." Me too. "This and the others have been getting me to think." This is why I'm going to continue to choose books blindly, you guys. I like being challenged. I like reading something, going into it thinking, "Okay, I think I know what this is going to be about."
Pahla B:
Then not necessarily having it be entirely different, but just having it be what it is, just really enjoy that. So, so fun. In fact, here, here's the part where I'm going to do my final podcast finishing. Here we go. Thank you guys so much for joining me today. So coming up in the month of the February, we're going to be reading Live the Best Story of Your Life by Bob Litwin. I don't have a link to put in the chatroom here, but when I send out the replay, I will definitely have, well, I'll have a link to Chirp Audiobooks just so that you can go there. Because, of course, Chirp Audiobooks has this for really cheap this month. It is only $3.99, and if you are brand new to Chirp, you can use the code Pahla5, which is P-A-H-L-A and the number five with no spaces, to get $5 off.
Pahla B:
I have to tell you, you guys, I know that... Well, I don't know. If you are new to me, you don't know, but if you've been around for a while, you probably have noticed I don't do a lot of brand deals. I just I've worked with a couple of different companies and I have lots of feelings about them, and I really love working with Chirp. Really specifically when we were working together to find the book... Thank you, Trisha. Trisha, you are just like jogging on the spot with these links today. Thank you so much. The author of the new book is Bob Litwin. He's apparently this amazing tennis player, and this is going to be a little bit more self-helpy. This is not going to be as densely science, I hope, we'll see. I'm going into a blind you guys.
Pahla B:
But so here's what it happened. This book was already on sale and it was only going to be on sale for like another week or so. Then as soon as I said, "Oh, hey, here's this book." The people that I work with at Chirp went to the publisher and said, "Can we please have this on sale? Can we work out a deal with you so that it can be on sale for the entire month of February?" Like Chirp is awesome, they want to work with me, they want to work with you, they want to give you amazing deals. Frankly, they're just really nice. Like the people that I work with there, they're really nice. If you are a brand new user, you can get the $5 off. If you are not a brand new user, you can get it for $3.99. If it is not available where you live, honestly, you guys, you never...
Pahla B:
As you saw in the chat, you don't even have to finish these books, you don't have to read them. You can just come hang out with us. Totally fine. And you can read it anyway that feels best to you because that really is it's one of my favorite parts of this conversation when we talk about the difference between reading and listening and how that affects you and how you absorb the material. Super, super fun. You guys, so many thank yous to everybody, to Sally. Thank you so much, Sally. So, so appreciated having you here today. Thank you everybody for being here today. So much fun.
Pahla B:
I don't think I told you, the next live, do I have my calendar here? I do. It's going to be the last Sunday in February. Don't mind me, looking at my calendar. I'm already on March. That's how far ahead I'm planning. The 27th, Sunday the 27th of February, and when I hand out the replay, I will have a link to register because I do like it when you guys register. That way I let in. Only people who are actually here for the book club as opposed to riff raff. You guys, thank you so, so much for being here. I'll see you next time.
Pahla B:
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